Part 7 (1/2)

One of the things we in the West might imitate with advantage is the village crematorium. In j.a.pan it is of the simplest construction. The rate for villagers was 50 sen, that for outsiders 2 yen. No doubt there would be an additional yen for the priest. In a little building which was thirty years old 200 bodies had been cremated.

I looked into a small co-operative rice storehouse. The building was provided by a number of members ”swearing” to save at the rate of a yen and a half a month each until the funds needed had acc.u.mulated.

The money was obtained by extra labour in the evening. Just before I left j.a.pan the Department of Agriculture was arranging to spend 2 million yen within a ten-years' period to encourage the building of 4,000 rice storehouses.

As I watched the water pouring from one rice field to another and wondered how the rights of landowners were ever reconciled, someone reminded me of the phrase, ”water splas.h.i.+ng quarrels,” that is disputes in which each side blames the other without getting any farther forward. To take an unfair advantage in controversy is to draw water into one's own paddy. The equivalent for ”pouring water on a duck's back” is ”flinging water in a frog's face.” A Western European is always astonished in j.a.pan by the lung power of Far Eastern frogs.

The noise is not unlike the bleating of lambs.

Every now and again one comes on a fragrant bed of lotus in its paddy field. It seems odd at first that lotus--and burdock--should be cultivated for food. As a pickle burdock is eatable, but lotus and some unfamiliar tuberous plants are pleasant food resembling in flavour boiled chestnuts. _Konnyaku_ (_hydrosme rivieri_), a near relative of the arum lily, is produced to the weight of 11 million _kwan_--a _kwan_ is roughly 8-1/4 lbs.[40] The yield of burdock is about 44 million _kwan_. The chief of all vegetables is the giant radish, of which 7-1/4 million _kwan_ are grown. Taro yields about 150 million _kwan_. Foreigners usually like the young sprouts taken from the roots of the bamboo, a favourite j.a.panese vegetable.

This is as convenient a place as any to speak of an important agricultural fact, the enormous amount of filth worked into the paddies. As is well known, hardly any of the night soil of j.a.pan is wasted. j.a.panese agriculture depends upon it. Formerly the night soil was removed from the houses after being emptied into a pair of tubs which the peasant carried from a yoke. Such yoke-carried tubs are still seen, but are chiefly employed in carrying the substance to the paddies. The tubs which are taken to dwellings are now mostly borne on light two-wheeled handcarts which carry sometimes four and sometimes six. A farmer will push or pull his manure cart from a town ten or twelve miles off. It is difficult to leave or enter a town without meeting strings of manure carts. The men who haul the carts get together for company on their tedious journey. They seem insensible to the concentrated odour. Often the wife or son or daughter may be seen pus.h.i.+ng behind a cart. There is a certain amount of transportation by horse-drawn frame carts, carrying a dozen or sixteen tubs, and by boats. I was told of a city of half a million inhabitants which had thirty per cent. of its night soil taken ten miles away. The work was undertaken by a co-operative society which paid the munic.i.p.ality the large sum of 70,000 yen a year. The removal of night soil, its storage in the fields in sunken b.u.t.ts and concrete cisterns--carefully protected by thatched, wooden or concrete roofs--and its constant application to paddy fields or upland plots cause an odour to prevail which the visitor to j.a.pan never forgets.[41]

It must not be supposed that, because the j.a.panese are careful to utilise human waste products, no other manure is employed. There is an enormous consumption of chemical fertilisers. Then there are brought into service all sorts of crop-feeding materials, such as straw, gra.s.s, compost, silkworm waste, fish waste, and of course the manure produced by such stock as is kept.[42] In Aichi the value of human waste products used on the land is only a quarter of the value of the bean cake and fish waste similarly employed.

At Mr. Yamasaki's excellent agricultural school (prefectural), which I visited more than once,[43] I was struck by the grave bearing of the students. I saw them not only in their cla.s.srooms but in their large hall, where I was invited to speak from a platform between the busts of two rural worthies, Ninomiya, of whom we have heard before, and another who was ”distinguished by the righteousness of his public career.” As in the Danish rural high schools, store is set on hard physical exercise. An hour of exercise--_judo_ (jujitsu), sword play or military drill--is taken from six to seven in the morning and another at midday with the object of ”strengthening the spirit” and ”developing the character,” for ”our farmers must not only be honest and determined but courageous.” Severe physical labour, shared by the teacher, is also given out of doors, for example, in heaping manure.

”We believe,” said one of the instructors, ”in moral virtue taught by the hands.”

For an hour a day ”the main points of moral virtue” are put before the different grades of students, according to their ages and development.

The school has a guild to which the twenty teachers and all the students belong. It is a kind of co-operative society for the ”purchase and distribution of daily necessities,” but one of its objects is ”the maintenance of public morality.” Then there is the students' a.s.sociation which has literary and gymnastic sides, the one side ”to refine wisdom and virtue,” the other ”for the rousing of spirit.” Mention may also be made of a ”discipline calendar” of fixed memorial days and ceremonies ”that all the students should observe”: the ceremony of reading the Imperial Rescript on education, thrift and morality, and the ceremonies at the end of rice planting, at harvest and at the maturity of the silk-worm. The fitting-up of the school is Spartan but the rooms are high and well lighted and ventilated. The students' hot bath accommodates a dozen lads at a time. The studies are also the dormitories, and in the corner of each there is stored a big mosquito netting. Except for a few square yards near the doors, these rooms consist of the usual raised platform covered with the national _tatami_ or matting.

I heard a characteristic story of the Director. During the Russo-j.a.panese war everybody was economising, and many people who had been in the habit of riding in _kuruma_ began to walk. Our agricultural celebrity had always had a pa.s.sion for walking, so it was out of his power to economise in _kuruma_. What he did was to cease walking and take to _kuruma_ riding, for, he said, ”in war time one must work one's utmost, and if I move about quickly I can get more done.”

I may add a story which this rare man himself told me. I had seen in his house a photograph of a memorial slab celebrating the heroic death of a peasant. It appeared that in a period of scarcity there was left in this peasant's village only one unbroken bale of rice. This rice was in the possession of the peasant, who was suffering from lack of food. But he would not cook any of the rice because he knew that if he did the village would be without seed in spring. Eventually the brave man was found dead of hunger in his cottage. His pillow had been the unopened bale of rice.

In the house of a small peasant proprietor I visited the inscriptions on the two _gaku_ signified ”Buddha's teaching broken by a beautiful face” and ”Cast your eyes on high.” On the wall there was also a copy of a resolution concerning a recent Imperial Rescript which 500 rural householders, at a meeting in the county, had ”sworn to observe,” and, as I understood, to read two or three times a year.

j.a.pan, as I have already noted, has always been a more democratic country than is generally understood; but the people have been accustomed to act under leaders. Some time ago an official of the Department of Agriculture visited a certain district in order to speak at the local temple in advocacy of the adjustment of rice fields. (See Chapter VIII.) A dignitary corresponding to the chairman of an English county council was at the temple to receive the official, but at the time appointed for the meeting to begin the audience consisted of one old man. Although the official from Tokyo and the _guncho_ (head of a county) waited for some time, no one else put in an appearance. So they asked the old man the reason. He replied by asking them the object of the meeting. They told him. He said that he had so understood and that the community had so understood, but the farmers were very busy men. Therefore, as he was the oldest man in the district, they had sent him as their representative. Their instructions were that he would be able to tell from his experience of the district whether what the authorities proposed would be a good thing for it or not. If he considered it to be a bad thing they would not do it, but if he thought it to be a good thing they would do it.

He was to hear all that was said and then to give a decision on the community's behalf to the officials who might attend. ”So,” said the old man to the Tokyo official and the _guncho_, ”if you convince me you have convinced the village.” And after two hours' explanation they convinced him!

There are in j.a.pan hydraulic engineering works as remarkable in their way as any I have seen in the Netherlands. Some of these works, for example the tunnels for conducting rice-field water through considerable hills, have been the work of unlettered peasants. In one place I found that 80 miles or more of irrigation was based on a ca.n.a.l made two centuries ago. It is good to see so many embankings of refractory streams and excavations of river beds commemorated by slabs recording the public services of the men who, often at their own charges, carried out these works of general utility.

In various parts of the country I came upon smallholders who had reached a high degree of proficiency in the fine art of dwarfing trees. One day I stopped to speak with a farmer who by this art had added 1,000 yen a year to his agricultural income. A thirty-years-old maple was one of his triumphs. Another was a pomegranate about a foot and a half high. It was in flower and would bear fruit of ordinary size. The wonder of dwarfing is wrought, as is now well known, by cramping the roots in the pot and by extremely skilful pruning, manuring and watering. While we drank tea some choice specimens were displayed before a screen of unrelieved gold. In the room in which we sat the farmer had arranged in a bowl of water with great effectiveness hydrangea, a spray of pomegranate and a cabbage.

One marks the respect shown to the rural policeman. In his summer uniform of white cotton, with his flat white cap and white gloves, and an imposing sword, he looks like a naval officer, even if, as sometimes happens, his feet are in _zori_. He gets respect because of his dignified presence and sense of official duty, because of the considerable powers which he is able to exercise, because he stands for the Government, and because he is sometimes of a higher social grade than that to which policemen belong in other countries. At the Restoration many men of the samurai cla.s.s did not think it beneath them to enter the new sword-wearing police force and they helped to give it a standing which has been maintained. As to the policeman being a representative of the Government, the ordinary j.a.panese has a way of speaking of the Government doing this or that as if the Government were irresistible power. Average j.a.panese do not yet conceive the Government as something which they have made and may unmake[44]. But is it likely that they should, parliamentary history, the work of their betters, being as short as it is? It is not whithout significance that the Chambers of the Diet are housed in temporary wooden buildings.

The rural policeman is not only a paternal guardian of the peace but an administrative official. He keeps an eye on public health. He is charged with correctly maintaining the record of names and addresses--and some other particulars--of everybody in the village. It is his duty to secure correct information as to the name, age, place of origin and real business of every stranger. He attends all public meetings, even of the young men's and young women's a.s.sociations, and no strolling players can give their entertainment without his presence. As to the movements of strangers, my own were obviously well known. Indeed a friend told me that in the event of my losing myself I had only to ask a policeman and he would be able to tell me where I was expected next! At the houses of well-to-do people I was struck by the way in which the local police officer--sometimes, no doubt, a sergeant or perhaps a man of the rank of our superintendent or chief constable--called with the headman and joined our kneeling circle in the reception-room. Nominally he came to pay his respects, but his chief object, no doubt, was to take stock of what was going on. I invariably took the opportunity of closely interviewing him.

The extraordinary degree to which j.a.panese are commonly accustomed in their differences of opinion to refrain from blows makes many of their quarrels harmless. The threat to send for the policeman or the actual appearance of the policeman has an almost magical effect in calming a disturbance. The j.a.panese policeman believes very much in reproving or reprimanding evil doers and in reasoning with folk whose ”carelessness” has attracted attention. Sometimes for greater impressiveness the admonitions or exhortations are delivered at the police station[45]. In more than one village I heard a tribute paid to the good influence exerted on a community by a devoted policeman.

The chief of an agricultural experiment station also seems to obtain a large measure of respect, to some extent, no doubt, because he occupies a public office. The regard felt for Mr. Yamasaki goes deeper. A few years ago he was sent on a mission abroad and in his absence his local admirers cast about for a way of showing their appreciation of his work. They began by raising what was described to me as ”naturally not a large but an honourable sum.” With this money they decided to add three rooms to his dwelling. They had noted how visitors were always coming to his house in order to profit by his experience and advice. Mr. Yamasaki uses the rooms primarily as ”an hotel for people of good intentions--those who work for better conditions.” I was proud to stay at this ”hotel” and to receive as a parting gift an old _seppuku_ blade.

Which reminds me that one night at a house in the country I found myself sitting under photographs of the late General and Countess Nogi and of the gaunt bloodstained room of the depressing ”foreign style”

house in which they committed suicide on the day of the funeral of the Emperor Meiji[46]. One of my fellow-guests was a professor at the Imperial University; the other was a teacher of lofty and unselfish spirit. They were both samurai. I mentioned that a man of worth and distinction has said to me that, while he recognised the n.o.bility of Nogi's action, he could but not think it unjustifiable. I was at once told that j.a.panese who do not approve of Nogi's action ”must be over-influenced by Western thought.” ”Those who are quintessentially j.a.panese,” it was explained, ”think that Nogi did right. Bodily death is nothing, for Nogi still lives among us as a spirit. He labours with a stronger influence. Many hearts were purified by his sacrifice. One of Nogi's reasons for suicide was no doubt that he might be able to follow his beloved Emperor, but his intention was also to warn many vicious or unpatriotic people. Some politicians and rich people say they are patriotic, but they are animated by selfish motives and desires. Nogi's suicide was due to his loving his fellow-countrymen sincerely. Surely he was acting after the manner of Christ. Nogi crucified himself for the people in order to atone in a measure for their sins and to lead them to a better way of life.”

I heard from my friends something of Nogi's demeanour. The old general was a familiar figure in Tokyo. In the street cars--those were the days when they were not over-crowded--he was always seen standing. His admirers used to say that his face ”beamed with beneficence.” But Nogi, though he loved to be within reach of the Emperor and did his part as head of the Peers' School, liked nothing better than to get away to the country. He was originally a peasant and he still possessed a _cho_ of upland holding. He was glad to work on it with the digging mattock of the farmer.

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